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Head of Risk - Cyprus

Bitvavo· Cyprus
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CyprusFull-timePosted 4w ago

About the role

Local Head of Risk role based in Limassol, responsible for risk management for Bitvavo Europe Limited (MiFID II regulated entity in Cyprus) and reporting to the Group Head of Risk in Amsterdam.

Responsibilities

  • Own and continuously improve the risk management framework, including risk taxonomy, risk appetite, tolerance levels, risk register, policies, RCSA methodology and the three-lines-of-defence operating model
  • Maintain the risk appetite framework across credit, market, solvency, liquidity, operational, reputational, strategic and technology risk
  • Produce concise, decision-oriented reporting for the Board and Risk Committee, covering the risk tolerance dashboard, top risks, appetite breaches, emerging themes and open issues
  • Support the Board's annual assessment of framework effectiveness and respond to Internal Audit and CySEC findings within the function's remit
  • Counterparty and credit: Monitor exposure to clients, clearing members, CCPs, bilateral counterparties and custodians, including limits, concentration analysis and collateral
  • Client margin and leverage: Conduct independent review of margin methodology, define stress tests, set tolerance levels and gap risk on derivatives and leveraged products, and challenge assumptions and back test outcomes
  • Market risk: Manage inventory, hedging, settlement mismatches, FX and corporate action exposure, within set sensitivity and position limits
  • Liquidity and funding: Oversee settlement liquidity, cash funding for settlement purposes, liquidity stress testing and the contingency funding plan
  • Capital: Own the ICARA, including own funds and K factor monitoring, internal capital and liquidity adequacy, and wind down analysis, supporting accurate prudential reporting to CySEC
  • Stress testing: Run firm wide and reverse stress tests covering extreme market moves, gap events, venue or CCP disruption, clearing broker default and volume spikes, with clear management actions
  • Third party and outsourcing: Conduct criticality assessment, due diligence, concentration risk analysis, exit strategies and maintenance of the register of arrangements
  • Business impact analysis: Own the methodology and cycle, criticality, MTO, RTO/RPO and dependencies, feeding BCP/DR and third party criticality
  • Incident management and escalation procedure: Manage severity classification, escalation triggers to ExCo, Board and CySEC via Compliance, live assessment and post incident remediation
  • Operational resilience: Define important business services, impact tolerances and resource mapping, run scenario and tabletop testing, and close gaps under DORA

Qualifications

  • Approximately 8 to 10 years in risk management within a regulated broker, investment firm, exchange or clearing member, including several years leading a risk function or major risk domain
  • Demonstrated ownership of enterprise risk framework and risk self assessment (not solely advisory or policy experience)
  • Proficient knowledge and experience in both financial and non-financial risk within an exchange or broker firm operating in the capital markets and or crypto domain
  • Expert knowledge of financial instruments, including crypto, stocks, ETFs, derivatives and commodities, and the clearing and settlement process
  • Working knowledge of the CIF prudential framework, including the IFD/IFR regime, ICARA, K factor requirements and prudential reporting to CySEC, including FinRep and Corep
  • Familiarity with the wider requirements applying to a CIF, including the Investment Services and Activities and Regulated Markets Law, relevant CySEC circulars and directives, MiFID, DORA, MiFIR and EMIR
  • Quantitative fluency, with the ability to interrogate margin models, stress scenarios and exposure data rather than accept the output

Skills

Required:Risk management leadershipEnterprise risk frameworkRegulatory reporting (CySEC, FinRep, Corep)

Benefits

  • Life at Bitvavo page with total rewards information (referenced in the job post)
Last updated Sep 23, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Bitvavo

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